Project Overview
Commodities
- Agronomic: grass (misc. annual), grass (misc. perennial)
- Animals: bovine
Practices
- Animal Production: feed/forage, rangeland/pasture management
- Education and Training: on-farm/ranch research
Proposal summary:
Rangelands of the western US
sustain the livelihoods and communities of many ranchers and
their families. They are, however, becoming increasingly
difficult to manage given the prolonged drought most of the
western US has experienced over the last decade. Such conditions
constrain the rangelands’ ability to produce sustainable forage
under conventional grazing management systems. We hope to
mitigate these negative effects of drought on forage productivity
by implementing the virtual fence technology. We believe that
virtual fencing can be used to manage cattle in such a way that
reduces the pressure on forage by allowing for more rest. If
true, this could lead to greater forage resilience in a climate
of ever prevalent drought.
Virtual fencing, however, is a
relatively new technology with very few accounts of its
effectiveness by ranchers. We, therefore, plan to not only
experimentally use virtual fencing to potentially restore heavily
grazed areas of our eastern New Mexico rangeland but also share
our experiences with installing the infrastructure, learning the
technology, training the cattle, and assessing rangeland health
with our neighbors and other ranchers across the western US. This
rancher-focused perspective is sorely needed when other ranchers
are considering adopting a new, risky, and expensive - but
potentially sustainable - management tool.
Project objectives from proposal:
Research objectives:
- Gain an in-depth understanding
of the technology, software, and additional management
needs, from a young rancher’s
perspective, when using
virtual fencing for adaptive cattle grazing on an eastern NM
rangeland. - Test whether virtual fence
technology can be used to implement a new cattle management
system to provide rest to highly used areas, and increase
forage production and drought resiliency.
Education objectives:
- Develop outreach materials for
other ranchers and agency managers that communicate the
benefits, drawbacks, unforeseen expenses, and management
decision points of using virtual fence technology to implement
new cattle management systems, from a rancher’s point of
view.